Woman's Hour - Parent Strike, Bella Mackie, Nigeria schoolgirl kidnappings

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

People who were sexually abused as children and later seek help for mental health problems are being failed by the NHS, according to The Royal College of Psychiatrists. The RCOP has issued a public apology, saying decades of mismanagement and misdiagnosis have left many survivors without the support they need. Anita Rani is joined by Caroline Thompson, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, and Dr Jo Stubley, a consultant psychiatrist and clinical lead of the Tavistock Trauma Service, who are co-authors of the RCOP's position statement. Today in towns and cities across the country, parents are being encouraged to go on strike to raise awareness about, what the strike's organisers say are the rising costs of raising children and the impossible demands this puts on parents. Anna Whitehouse, the founder of Flex Appeal, and George Gabriel, who co-founded The Dad Shift, discuss the flexible working and parental leave policies that they are calling for with The Parent Strike and how the Government is responding. For more than a decade, armed gangs in northern Nigeria have repeatedly targeted schools, kidnapping children for ransom and forcing some educational establishments to close. BBC journalist Yemisi Adegoke has recently returned from the state of Zamfara, where ongoing insecurity has left many girls unable to attend school, threatening their futures.Bella Mackie's third novel, Claws Out!, is published this week. It's a witty crime caper about an ageing ‘gold-digger,’ who is rumoured to have murdered three husbands and has a new suitor in sight. Bella - whose debut How to Kill Your Family is currently being turned into a Netflix series starring Anya Taylor-Joy - tells Anita why she loves exploring the British class system in her books and why she’s determined to use her platform to talk openly about mental health.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Rebecca Myatt

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Be the first to listen to your favorite shows, like Evil Genius, Good, Bad Billionaire, and You're Dead to Me, with a subscription to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple Podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts ad-free with an Amazon music subscription. Hello, I'm Anita Rani, and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4.

Good morning and welcome to the program. Now, are you a parent, what would make your life better for you in your working environment? Today we hear from the campaigners encouraging parents to go on strike. They want better flexible working and paternity leave. Twelve years on from the kidnapping of 200 girls in Chabok in Nigeria by the militant Islamist group Boko Haram, will be turning our attention to why girls are still being kidnapped in Nigeria. And Bella Mackey is here to talk to us about her page turner of a new book, Claws Out. It's about a gold digger and whether her lead character is behind the deaths of her three husbands.

Bella's observations about the middle classes, the upwardly mobile and snobbery is very sharp and funny. So this morning, we want to hear from you. Come on, fess up to the most snobby thing you have done, or tell me about someone you know and their heirs and graces. Do you save your fanciest things for certain people? you dress according to who you might bump into. Do you have designs on moving up the social ladder? I'm thinking hyacinth bouquet and a mandaland. Or are you the other way around and double down on your roots just to make a point?

So get in touch with me and remember you can remain anonymous. The ways to get in touch, there are many. On most smart speakers, you can say Alexa, ask BBC sounds to send a comment. You can text us on 84844. You can email us by going to our website and the WhatsApp number is 0300. 100444, that text number once again 84844. But first, people who were sexually abused as children and later seek help for mental health problems are being failed by the NHS, according to the Royal College of Psychiatrists. They have issued a public apology, saying decades of mismanagement and misdiagnosis have left many survivors without the support they need.

The college says mental health services have too often focused on treating symptoms such as anxiety, depression and psychosis, rather than understanding how childhood trauma can continue to shape people's lives well into adulthood. We're joined by Caroline Thompson, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and Dr. Joe Stubley, a consultant psychiatrist and clinical lead of the Tavistock Trauma Service. Both are co-authors of the Royal College of Psychiatrists' position statement. Good morning to both of you. Joe, I'm going to come to you first. The Royal College of Psychiatrists is apologising for decades of failures towards survivors of childhood sexual abuse. What has the profession got so wrong?

Thank you, Anita. I think it's important to acknowledge that this is a difficult topic for all of us to think about. I was listening to the news and to your introduction and hearing about all kinds of traumas, whether we're talking about war or kidnapping or terrorism. But these are the things that we tend to be able to talk and think about together. Child sexual abuse is a trauma that is hidden.

It is often associated with enormous shame and stigma and silencing. And I think inevitably that has impacted on the capacity of the mental health system to respond appropriately. I think that what we have been trying to, trying to do in the position statement and in this kind of media setting is to bring this more to light. And the apology yesterday was the first step, but the position statement brings in many different ways in which we are trying to address the problems that have happened over the past. And what has happened? Well, I think that we are all aware that the mental health

system is struggling right now. Indeed, the National Health Service is struggling. There's not enough resource. And one of the ways that we have seen not enough resource impacting is that mental health does not have parity with physical health. And the lack of resource has, I think, meant that despite many good clinicians out there and best intentions, we have a system that has been focused on diagnosis, that kind of question of what's wrong with you rather than what happened to you, which is the basic tenant of trauma-informed care. This has meant that many of our services have been designed specifically for people who have certain diagnoses, and you have to be able to get that diagnosis to get the help

that you need. Many have found that this is an impossible gateway to get through, or that when they do get into the system, it is not possible for them to be able to get the care that they need. And we know many survivors don't disclose what happens until years or even decades later. I mean, you mentioned some of the things there, shame, stigma, silencing. But why can it take so long? Well, I think that there are multiple ways that we might think about this. One of them, of course, is that this is an experience that is happening to children.

And the impact of trauma on children's developing minds is profound. If we think just for instance about the basic response to being under threat, the fight, flight, freeze that I'm sure many people know about, it's almost inevitable that children will respond with freeze. And part of what happens with freeze is that the defence of dissociation comes in. And so the mind kind of detaches from the experience and might compartmentalise it. So one of the things that we see is that memories are often fragmented. they can be confused, and they may be completely put away and not remembered for many years until something comes to bring them back again. And so for survivors, this is really difficult that it is inevitably going to be problematic

finding a way to be able to talk about something that's unspeakable. And then, of course, from the mental health perspective, we have many people who have not been properly trained in how to facilitate disclosure. And so they are often frightened of asking questions. We know, for instance, that only 20% of people who come into mental health services get asked about abuse. So if you're not being asked and you have all of these struggles with remembering, then it's a really difficult problem. We will come back to some of what you've just mentioned that. I would like to bring you in here, Caroline, morning. Good morning. Thank you for taking the time to be in the studio with us this

morning. Why is this so important for you to talk about? I think this is massively important, particularly the apology, because, and I think all survivors will relate to this, because for the first time you feel seen, you feel heard, and more importantly, you feel believed. And it clearly admits, as Joe has said, that this is an area of institutional failure where the lack of knowledge, training and appropriate trauma-informed services for survivors have led to misdiagnosis, inappropriate treatment and avoidable harm with re-traumatization happening at every stage of the process. What can you tell us about the impact on you throughout your life? The effects of child sexual abuse are lifelong. They affect your mental and physical well-being.

and the greatest long-term effect really is a loss of trust in other people and a feeling of alienation from everything around you which can be very lonely and because you believe what happened to you is somehow your fault you live with this terrible sense of shame and self-discussed and have a lack of self-compassion and this leads to a hypervigilance or high alert to trust worthiness of other people, particularly in authority. And together with the fear of potential further abuse,

you live with a constantly elevating stress hormones, cortisol and adrenaline, which leads to a constant feeling of unease and anxiety and slight dread. And this also affects your homeostatic mechanisms, i.e. the regulatory systems that control your heart and your lungs and your gut. an immune system. And there's one other important point is that in order to minimise the potential for further abuse,

you learn to avoid conflict and never upset anyone. And this leads to a sort of people-pleasing trait. It's really survival mechanisms. But it leaves you with an inability to put your hand up and say, no, that's not okay or set healthy boundaries.

and all of that leads to an increased risk of problems later in life such as you're more vulnerable to further domestic violence or abuse or problems with addiction. And then you eventually sought help in your 50s. Can you tell me about that in that moment? Yes, I sort of dissociated really from it because it's so terrible. Your brain shuts down what's happened to as a child.

And you try never to visit that. And the way memory is a process, it's not normal processing, and they sort of remain unprocessed and fragmented. And so the story of what happened remains quite elusive. But the feelings that you felt when you were being abused are easily accessible, particularly when you're triggered. And so I presented two mental health services in my 50s because I'd suddenly started having terrifying nightmares,

night after night. And I can only sort of describe this as feeling like I was going to die every night. And in my consultation, I was astonished and really shamed to me met with disbelief and really shame for my symptoms. And I was told it was hard to reconcile a previous history of abuse with the fact I'd had a family and a career.

and that my symptoms were not typical of abuse because there'd been this delay in onset and previous dissociation where I hadn't been able to access the memories properly. So you eventually found the capacity within yourself to talk to somebody about it in your 50s and you weren't believed? Yes, I wasn't believed.

And what was the impact of that? Catastrophic. I think I was already really ashamed at telling my story. I was ashamed because mentally I couldn't cope because of the nightmares and lack of sleep. And then I was told I had poor adult coping mechanisms and needed therapy for my poor communication skills with the focus entirely centred on what was wrong with me

rather than what happened to me. Joe, I'm going to bring you back. Why was the help that Caroline received so inadequate? What do you make of what you're hearing? It's shocking, isn't it, to hear this, to hear that someone has the courage to go and seek help and meets a clinician who clearly does not have an understanding of trauma and of non-recent child sexual abuse, but also has not been trained clearly in trauma-informed care or in disclosure facilitation. And I think it is such a profoundly healthy.

helpful thing that Caroline is doing to let us know that this was her experience because it highlights that despite what we might hear in policy or what we get in terms of people saying, yes, this is all okay and we're working on it. Caroline's story alongside the apology from the college say, this is still happening. There is a recent piece of research that showed that 20% of people felt believed and respected when they disclosed in statutory services. 20% that's just so low. 70% felt believed and respected in voluntary services. So we have a disparity. And I think that this is part of what we really need to be addressing with system-wide change. Caroline, I just have to say, you know, the courage that it must take to then take this experience of

yours and want to do something about it and talk about it publicly. I just want to sort of acknowledge what that must take, even just for you to be sitting here speaking to me this morning. Eventually, you received specialist trauma therapy privately. What was the difference about that treatment and how did, and what finally helped you? I think the big difference and the big lesson here is that I was believed and I was treated compassionately. And as a child, you develop these coping survival mechanisms which you shape your brain and affect the way you live your life. And these survival mechanisms can become unhelpful

in adult life. But the therapists recognised them for what they were and then also helped me understand what had happened to me. And with that, with the understanding, and help, I was able to learn how I can live with what happens to you. And with that proper help and trauma-informed support, you can go on and live a completely fulfilling and happy life. But not being understood the way your body reacts when it's flooded with these symptoms as though you're being abused is so bewildering. and you do need help and support to come to terms and move on from that.

Yeah. I mean, Jo, there may be people listening this morning who have gone through this themselves have never stepped out to be able to talk about it but want to. But hearing that they may not be received within, you know, the people who are there to try and help them in the right way, will be reluctant to now come forward. So what would you say? What are the problems or the dangers of this poor mental health service

and the services that are available? Well, first of all, I would say to people, of course I understand that there would be reluctance. I would say that one of the things that we're doing at the college is we have a list of support services that people can ring that are trauma-informed, but part of why the position statement has been developed is precisely to have these kinds of conversations

to begin to make the changes that are needed for people to be able to come forward. And I think part of that, as we've touched on, is getting appropriate training for all staff across health and social care. But I also think there's something about the support that staff need. We know that there are many people who are burnt out, morally injured by the state of services, and we need to be able to attend to them appropriately. And this is going to be a long-term piece of work. But as clinicians, we can all start to start to.

today to be doing some of the things that Caroline described, to be respectful, to be compassionate, to be aware of something of the impact of what people might be going through, to have what we would call a trauma-informed stance. And I must say that if you are listening to this and you need help or advice, then support is available via the BBC Actionline website. Caroline, what needs to change to make sure other survivors have a different experience? I would echo what Joe has just said. I think It's about listening, listening with compassion, believing and have a trauma-informed approach where you are taking into consideration the past history as well as the presenting symptoms. I want to thank you both for taking the time to speak to me this morning.

Caroline Thompson, Joe Stubbley. Thank you. And we asked the Department of Health and Social Care for a statement and are waiting for their response. A spokesman for NHS. England said specialist services are available highlighting how victims could access support 24 hours a day, seven days a week through sexual assault referral centres and counselling services with information about them

available on the NHS website. People who have suffered historic child, sexual abuse may not have spoken about it for years. So it's vital that they know they can access specialist trauma-informed support through the NHS, he added. He also said steps were being taken to better support children and young people with additional training being provided to mental health support teams in schools and colleges. Once again, Caroline and Joe, thank you very much. 844 is the text number.

Now, the government's parental leave and pay review co-led by the Department for Business and Trade and the Department for Work and Pensions is due to conclude early next year. It aims to examine the current system, everything from maternity and paternity leave to shared parental leave, to shared parental leave, see how it can be improved to meet the needs of modern families while supporting economic growth. Today in towns and cities across the country, parents are being encouraged to go on strike, to raise awareness about what the strikes organisers call the rising costs of raising children and the impossible demands this puts on parents, particularly when it comes to flexible working and paternity leave. Organizers are calling this the UK's first ever parent strike.

Well, two of the strikes organizers are with me now. Anna Whitehouse is the founder of Flex Appeals. a campaign organisation calling for more flexible working and George Gabriel is the co-founder of the Dad Shift which is campaigning for better paternity leave in the UK. Anna and George, welcome. Hi. When I first read that we were doing the parents' strike, I thought something very completely different,

parents just downing tools saying we're not doing it anymore. That too. So tell us why your two forces came together. Why have you decided to organise this strike and what are you calling for? So I've been campaigning for parents' rights for about a decade. And to be absolutely honest, Denise, I'm just exhausted that it's a maternal fight, not a parental fight. So today, 12 o'clock, across the UK, we have men, dads, by our side, because we're not in the Industrial Revolution anymore where men went out and earned the bacon and women cooked it.

We're all together raising the next generation. And George and I came together and went, right, it's time to shout loud. together, not just for mothers. So before we find out what exactly you're calling for, what does the strike involve? Well, the strike is downing tools. Parents every day get up there, get the kids up, get them out of the door, head off to work, and put in a shift, and they put in a shift on two fronts. And what we're trying to call attention to is just that unbelievable workload

and the pressure facing those families during the cost of living crisis. So we're calling on parents across the country to down tools for two hours today, take their families along, get involved in some fun, friendly, kind of campaigning actions to say this really does have to change. Families are at breaking point and shouldn't be there and we can do more to change it. What's the response being like? How many people are you expecting? It's amazing. We've got thousands of parents across the country.

We've got these WhatsApp groups where people are firing around their homemade placards and the stuff that people will see is hilarious out there. So yeah, people really energised. The rain, notwithstanding, I mean, everyone's getting their rompers on, buggies, the rest of it. So yeah, we're all gearing up and heading out to our local town halls and it's really exciting. Because you know this is a follow-on. from the 1975 Icelandic women's strike.

Yes, where they all down tools? And we were like, why is it women on their endless list of things to do? You know, the domestic load, the invisible labour. Why are we fighting for basic equality? So, yeah, it's going to be a joint venture today. And you're calling for a few things, including what you call a lack of flexible working and poor paternity leave. So let's start with flexible working.

What are you calling for exactly? So right now you might have seen. the headlines, back to office, five days a week from the titans of business. In the pandemic, we could see working from homework, that productivity wasn't impacted, and yet there's been a massive rollback. We call it the silent reflux, reflex. And so right now I'm fighting for legislative change, but cultural change, because those making the decisions have private chefs, nannies, wrap around childcare and are dictating the lives of the masses who have childcare needs in an inflexible system

that quite simply isn't working. And how about you, George? So the UK has the worst paternity leave in Europe. We offer new dads just two weeks on less than half the minimum wage with nothing if you're self-employed. It is absolutely ridiculous. You know, two weeks might work for a summer holiday, but the idea that you're going to work out

how to support your partner, who might be recovering from a challenging birth, bond with your baby, or take your first steps on this journey, that, you know, one of the most important journeys a man can face, which is becoming a decent dad in just two weeks is absolutely ridiculous. The European average is 12, and at the moment all our research shows that particularly working class dads

can't even afford the two weeks on offer. And I remember I've just had a baby, and it still sits with me so personally that after those two weeks, he walks out the door or a non-birthing partner walks out the door, just as your breasts are leaking, your tears are falling, Your scars are burning. Your hormones are raging and your baby is crying. It is not just legislation.

It's inhumane currently what position we're being left in. So, and you will know all of this, Anna, but according to a survey done by the Institute of Directors, flexible working is already widespread. 500 business leaders, 87% of them say that it offer at least one form of flexible working in their organisation. And so the IOD therefore say that the focus should be, on enabling employers and employees to agree arrangements that work for both parties

rather than imposing rigid requirements that might not be practical for every business. So what's your response to that? Well, currently six in ten mothers, and I'm talking specifically from a mothering perspective, are losing their jobs because their flexible working requests are being denied. So what's being said is hot air. What's being done in practice is not on any level what you've just said. And if I can come in as well, I mean, the reality is, yeah, the pandemic drove a big shift in flexible working and work remotely for middle class professions.

But for the vast majority of working class blocs, the idea that flexible working is even on the table is a complete fantasy, really, for in kind of communities across the country and blue-collar work, people have never had the opportunity to have a discussion about how they can structure shifts differently so that it's actually possible for them to do one day a week picking up a nursery. And I want to be really clear that what people are talking about as flexible working right now is saying, right, yes, you can go from five days down to four. Yeah. But we'll pay you less, but you'll still be expected to fit that work into those four days. But what about small businesses, maybe even ones that are run by women who have two or three employees, or small to medium businesses for that matter? Should they be expected to offer flexible working even if they think if it's going to have a negative impact on their business?

I think to find negative, I think it's about. a relationship, I'm not here as a dictatorship saying employers have to do this. It's about being human and talking to your employees and finding a way that works for both of you. The NHS, we did a case study with Birmingham Women's Hospital. It was as simple as nurses deciding their shifts and informing the matron. That's flexible working. And there were fewer deaths on wards that were led flexibly. So I think it's flexibility of mind, flexibility of the way you work. I'm not dictating here. I'm saying discuss, have an open-minded approach to how you work. We don't all need to work in the confines of nine to five. That's not productive on any level.

And what about the other point that if women are working from home more, they might miss out on opportunities by just being in front of their bosses and being promoted, which we know we're not as well as much as men in the first place? It's brutal, you know, the water cooler effect. The chit-chat, in pubs after, you know, work, it's absolutely happening. That doesn't mean we say no to flexible working because we know flexible working is linked to closing the gender pay gap, so it's chicken and egg. I can't come up with the full solution, but what I can say is once we've got one bit in place, the secondary bit is countering that discrimination that happens when people do work

from home. But yeah, we've seen it works in a pandemic where CEOs had pictures of their children in the background, humanise the workforce. I'm not saying where and when you work. If you work well in the Ting Goods Isle, Tesco, I don't care. But look at what people are doing, not where they're sitting. That's it.

Talking about ending that discrimination. I mean, that will really happen when we equalise practice across men and women. It's so appalling the burdened women face in terms of maternity discrimination. You know, research from pregnant and screwed and other fantastic organisation shows 70,000 women a year losing their jobs because

of maternity discrimination. That will only change when we create greater equality in caregiving roles shared amongst couples. Who's doing it well, George, who's doing paternity well in other countries compared to your care? Basically everyone is one of those ones where you ask the team at the bottom of the league. You're like, who's doing well? And they look up and they're like, well, literally everyone above us. So the scandies are amazing, unsurprisingly. They offer each parent a significant chunk of properly paid, use it or lose it leave.

That way both caregivers get proper time to become. confident capable certainly. And I mean, I've been to a couple of Scandi countries and you kind of understand it's because of the value they place on the family structure, right? So even CEOs will sort of down tools and go home at 5 o'clock. 100%. I had one baby in Holland and you do not go back full time. And that is a mummer dach, a mummy day and a papa dach really integrally to this conversation.

Both parents cannot come back full time because they recognise you have a significant job which is raising the next generation. Yeah, I'd also say, you know, I've got an amazing three-year-old daughter and a one-year-old son. When my daughter arrived, I was obviously super excited, very scared, and you go home from the hospital. And I had no idea what I was doing. I think it's impossible trying to say, I mean, everyone faces that challenge when they become a parent, but the degree to which, particularly men in the UK, are just not socialised into their role as caregivers. So I went home and my daughter was the first baby I ever tried to change, did not go well,

first baby I ever tried to burp, did not go well. And it just takes time to become a confident, capable, solo caregiver. And if we rob dads, the chance of that time to become capable caregivers, we lock mums into that role. Not all dads who are entitled to leave in the UK take care. According to government statistics, roughly a third of dads take no paternity leave. And dads are more than three times as likely as mums to say this is because they could not afford to. So is part of this that dads still feel the pressure to be the main breadwinner?

Yeah, our research is overwhelmingly. It's financial pressure. You just can't afford in a cost of living crisis to take two weeks on less than half the minimum wage. And then to add insult to injury, we tell working class fathers who face the most brutal trade-off about whether they can take this leave on such a low rate of pay that they're not interested in their kids. They're not interested in being equal partners. Insult to injury. I mean, you can play the other way when we were talking about, you know, women, if you're not in the workforce turning up to work, you're not going to get the promotion. Do you think some men might. be reluctant to take time off because they fear the same thing that they'll be perceived as less committed to work. We see at the Dadchief that the traditional script of protecting and providing still means a huge amount across the country, but it is changing. We want to provide our kids not just with a safe place to grow up, but with a good example of what it means to be in a healthy relationship with our partner. We want to provide not just a meal on the table, but we want to provide them with our presence and active support in their lives. It's parenting, not mothering. There is a point about who pays for paternity leave.

And we reached out to various industry bodies, including the Institute of Directors, who said that businesses are already facing very significant additional employment costs. So any expansion of paternity leave could be funded by the state rather than employers. Do you agree with that? So currently paternity leave in all parental leave in the UK is funded by the state. Some companies choose to go above and beyond and enhance parental leave. We think that's the right model. There are big social problems that require us to come together to solve.

And of course, public finances are also stretched, but that's where there's good news. The good news is really clear in every country that improves paternity leave. What you see is at home, couples share parental leave more, they share caregiving more evenly. And women, their economic prospects grow, and they contribute more. So in the UK, it's modelled that if you give Dad six weeks and 90% of earnings, you drive 2.6 billion pounds of growth across the country in every postcode in every part of it. Because essentially, if you're saying two weeks, that's all you've got, at half, half the minimum wage, you're saying, dads, your role, your blueprinting that dad's role is to work and mum's role is to care.

That's all you're saying right now. And it has to change. There's also the issue of self-employed parents. So according to the Federation of Small Businesses, there are more than four million self-employed workers who miss out on any support. So an employed dad can take two weeks off and know roughly what they're going to get paid. And a self-employed dad takes two weeks off and earns nothing for those two weeks. So what are self-employed dad's telling you? I mean, it's a joke. You know, 20, 30 years ago when paternity leave was first introduced, self-employment meant something different. You'd be thinking about barristers. Today you're thinking about your like delivery driver. Self-employment has changed. There are now millions of low-paid people in kind of quasi-semi-working arrangements with their employers and leaving them in a situation where they have literally no time with their newborns to support their partners to figure out what it means to be a father. Totally unacceptable. It's the same for mothers too. I couldn't take any maternity leave because I'm self-employed.

So I went back, had to go back two weeks with my C-section scar hadn't even healed. It's just, yeah, there's holes in the system across the board. And as we started this item by saying that, you know, the government's parental leave and pay review is happening now and we're going to find out that it's going to conclude early next year. So it's in progress. They are discussing it. What would you like to see happen?

The key thing is this budget. If they're going to do something serious at the end of the leave review, they need to put money aside this budget this October? And, you know, Andy Burnham has been very clear. This is a cost of living focused government. Families expecting a newborn are on the front line of the crisis, and this is his chance to get on their side and support them at a moment that matters.

Have you spoken to the Prime Minister? Not directly to the Prime Minister. We were speaking to the business secretary, Johnny Reynolds, and other people in government. We are confident there's a real kind of will in government to get something done. Over 110 Labour parliamentarians have already been out publicly on the issue. So I genuinely think there is an opportunity to change this.

and we're excited that Labor can prove its case and get on the side of working class families to make it happen. I mean, Anna, the government has previously acknowledged that the parental leave system needs to be improved, stating that it did recognise that the current system does not do enough to support the many dads and partners who want to be hands-on and actively involved in caring for their children. What else would you like to see happen?

You know, I'm going to end just with a basic message I got from a dad a couple of weeks ago and he said, I put my flexible working request in and it was denied because essentially he was told, Can't your missus do that? That's it. In a nutshell, it's not even unconscious bias. It's conscious bias.

So I want to just see the whole landscape shift towards parents, not just mothers. Thank you, Anna White House from Flex Appeal and George Gabriel from the Dad shift. Thank you both for joining me this morning. And we do have a statement from a government spokesperson from the Department for Business and Trade saying our ongoing parental leave and pay review is exploring how we can better support working families. The review will conclude early next year and is considering all. entitlements, including paternity leave and pay, the findings will help us set out next steps for any reforms, which will support the government's ongoing work to raise living standards, give children the best start in life, and alleviate child poverty.

84844 is the text number. Your sales order says one thing, your inventory says another. Your spreadsheet says, good luck. Odu brings your business together on a single platform, from sales and accounting to inventory and marketing. Visit Odu.com to book a demo. It's ODbolo.com. Get more with BBC podcasts, wherever you listen. Be the first to listen to your favourite shows,

like evil genius, good, bad billionaire, and You're Dead to Me, with a subscription to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple Podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts ad-free with an Amazon music subscription. Now, starting school is a huge milestone for children, but it can bring up some big emotions for parents too. recorded in Salford in front of a live audience of local parents and children. This week's episode of the CBB's Parenting Download podcast explores what school readiness really means from building confidence and independence to managing playground politics, new routines and those first day wobbles. Katie Thist and Governor B are joined by clinical psychiatrist, psychologist rather, Dr. Martha Darius Collardo, Manchester Evening News Parents, Editor Emma Gill and presenter and traitor's fan favourite, Mina Shannon, whose daughter is star.

starting school in September. I feel like I'm about to go through like a grieving process. Like I feel like I'm losing my best friend. Currently, she only goes snor-shry two days a week. So I'm with her five days a week unless I'm at work. And that's flipping on itself where I'll only be with her two days and she'll be in school five days a week. Yeah, I just feel like I'm losing her forever almost.

Sorry, guys. That's so cute. I'm thinking it sounds fantastic. And you know what's crazy, Katie? Like about six months ago, I was like, school, school, school, can't wait, can't wait. I'm so excited, she's going to love it. Freedom. And now it's like the closer it gets, the more anxious I personally feel.

I think it doesn't matter, you know, whether you've done it once or twice or whatever for every single kid. It's still a separation. It's still that like milestone, that transition from having your little one. And I think there is a sense of that you're saying, oh, no, I'm losing my child. I think the way I always try and reframe that. is they're still little and they're still with you. They're just learning and developing some independence. And you can hear that episode in full and find out more expert advice,

activities and practical support for starting school by searching for CBB's parenting. And to listen on your SPART speaker, all you need to say is play Radio 4. And if you want to catch up with anything you might have missed, say Alexa Ask BBC sounds to rewind to the time you want. And of course, you can text Woman's Hour on 84844. Bella Mackey will be joining us soon to talk about her new novel Clause Out, where she skewers the middle classes. Can't wait to speak to her about it.

And I've asked you about your own snobbiness, and you've been getting in touch. I'm going to read out a couple of your messages. Being snobby, someone says, we live in a little known southwest London suburb. My husband, working class Midlander, always says we live near Posh Richmond. I, middle class southerner, always say,

we live near Hounslow, drives him mad. Another one here saying, when meeting with anyone, I double down, I grew up very poor and later in life became very lucky financially, but I never want anyone to think I'm above them. Money doesn't define someone and I always want my friends and family and strangers to remember that. 84844. Keep your thoughts coming in on anything you heard on the program today. Now, let's turn to Nigeria.

You may remember the tragic events of 2014 when more than 200 school girls were kidnapped by the militant Islamist group, Boko Haram, in the town of Chibok. Over 12 years on, bandit groups and heavily armed criminal gangs continue to carry out kidnappings, in some cases, even forcing educational establishments to close. In northwest Nigeria, the number of attacks rose by 78% in the first half of this year compared to the same period last year, according to an international conflict monitoring group. A recent and recent data from Nigeria's National Human Rights Commission shows that the number of kidnappings across the country doubled over the state. same period. While BBC journalist Yemisi Adagoke has recently returned from the northern state of Zamfara, where ongoing insecurity has left many girls unable to attend school, threatening, she says, a whole generation's future. Welcome. Thanks for having me. So tell us about your recent trip to northern Nigeria. First of all, how straightforward was it getting there and why you

wanted to go and talk about and find out more about what's happening? Yeah, it was really tricky to get to. the state that we went to Zamfara has no airport, so we had to fly into a neighbouring state and drive. And the safest way to do that was with a military escort. So we had two military trucks following us, decked out in full PPE for about four and a half hours. And it was really a tough journey to get there. I mean, I started by saying there's been a 78% increase just in the first half of this year compared to last year. So what's behind this increased violence? Well, the people that are responsible for this violence within the North West are locally known as bandits.

They are criminal gangs who are heavily armed who tend to target soft places like schools and mosques and kidnap people for ransom. They sometimes lay siege on villages, killing everybody. In certain cases, they take over communities and then extort villagers there asking them to be. pay for protection. So even farmers aren't able to go to work without paying these people who are essentially holding their community hostage. And they do this because they know that they can get a lot of money by holding people for ransom. I think we need to take a step back of it and sort of zoom out and sort of look at Nigeria and maybe start 12 years ago because I think it's in people's in the back of their memories somewhere about these 200 girls. I mean horrific that were taken

from Chibok and sort of where we've got to now. If you could, you emcee. So mass abductions, unfortunately, they're nothing new in Nigeria. Chibok was the one that made global headlines in 2014. 200 school girls were taken from their dorm. Even now 12 years later, there are still 80 to 90 girls that are still missing that have never come home. And sadly, the situation has deteriorated since then. That has been described by some people who engage in this violence as a sort of gateway,

that they recognise that this type of attack would garner a huge attention and they would be able to get a lot of money by doing this because these are young vulnerable people. Every family wants their children home and will do anything in order to facilitate that. That means either paying the ransom themselves or pressurising the government to act. And are these the girls that are being kidnapped? Are the families able to pay these ransoms? Who is paying the ransom?

No, a lot of the time they're not. So that's where it slightly becomes a little bit more complicated because the government then have to intervene. The Nigerian government, you know, has said publicly that they don't pay ransoms, but there have been conflicting reports about that. And why girls over boys? There are several reasons in terms of education, keeping them out of education is something.

And also there's a vulnerability there that these violent groups are keen to exploit. Do we know how many young girls are currently out of school? Yes, sadly Nigeria has one of the highest number of out-of-school children in the world. Figures differ, but it's between 18 to 20 million and 60% of that number, according to UNICEF, are girls. Can you tell us about Hanatu? So Hanatu is one of the girls that featured in a previous documentary called the Bandit Warlords of Zanfara. Her school in Jangebert in Sanfara State was,

attacked in 2021 and hundreds of girls were abducted. She witnessed that raid. And afterwards, when the girls were returned, an NGO decided to support some of the girls in terms of furthering their education. So Hanatu is one of those girls. She's been able to go back to school. She has just graduated from secondary school.

She wants to be a doctor. She's very typical teenager, loves BTS, loves K-pop. But she's overcome a lot of trauma. We have a clip of you speaking to Hanatu about her experience. Let's have a listen. It's been six years. I remember it often and it makes me feel sad. I cry.

On the other hand, I feel happy. I've been given the opportunity to study and live in peace. I feel happy I was selected. I study and I can now do a lot of things I couldn't do now that I'm here. That's why even when I feel sad, I remember this fact and I feel happy. I want to be a doctor so I can help the community and my relatives and people that have supported me. And you also met with women working for NGOs helping to educate out of school young girls. So tell me more about who you spoke to and what they told you.

Yes, there's a young woman called Tovia Moy who works for the Illimi Children's Fund. And that NGO is the one that supported Hanatu and some of the other girls getting back into education. and that NGO is extremely passionate and working really hard to try to combat the issue of young girls not being in school. You know, she spoke really passionately about why it's so important to educate girls, keeping them out of child marriage, increasing maternal health rates, child health rates. And she spoke about the worrying way that insecurity is affecting children's education that we could potentially be faced with a whole lost generation of young Nigerians

who are not being educated because of this. Yeah, and what is the long-term impact of that? Exactly, especially for girls. It's so devastating, not only just being locked out of economic opportunities, but there are instances of young women who are not educated being more likely to experience domestic violence and all sorts of other issues. And what is the government doing about this? Well, the government is talking.

tough as they usually do. They have allocated a record number of dollars, I think it's four billion to defence, which is the highest in the country's history. They've also recruited 28,000 new soldiers. And they are saying that they're taking a zero tolerance approach. But for many Nigerians, this just isn't enough. We're in a crisis state is what I've heard many, many times before and they are pushing for the government to do more. Yemisei, thank you so much for coming in to speak to me, BBC, Jen. this Yemisei Adegocke there. 84844 is the text number.

Now, Bella Mackey's debut novel, How to Kill Your Family, is a huge hit, selling more than 1.2 million copies, and it's currently being made into a Netflix series starring actor Anna, Anya Taylor Joy. Well, Bella is back with her third novel,

Clause Out, marrying darkly comic crime and social satire. This time, the drama centers around Diana, an aging gold digger who is rumoured to have murdered three husbands and has a new suitor in sight unless his entitled daughter, Kat, has anything to do with it. Bella Mackey, welcome back to Woman's Hour. Thank you so much. First of all, congratulations, loved it. Thank you.

Inhaled it. You have definitely carved out your own style. Not cozy crime. How would you describe it? Yeah, it's not cozy crime. It's kind of terrible people, terrible people doing terrible things and getting their come up. crime, I think, is what it is. Yeah, it's a good old mystery as well.

Yeah. Get me guessing. Let's get straight into it. Can we hear a bit? Yeah, of course you can. Let's get you to read straight away. I'll read straight away. So this is kind of the beginning chapter and it's setting the table.

I think the mother said staring up at the night sky with an odd look on her face. I think she poisons them and I wonder who's next. The woman had been wrong about a lot in life. She'd been wrong about the Iraq war. Though if you asked her now, she was always against it. she'd been wrong to trust her husband, who very much was still seeing Jacqueline Fellows every chance he got. She'd even been wrong when it came to getting a dog, picking a small, ratty-looking terrier who growled up babies and whined all night long.

She wasn't wrong about everything, though. At that moment outside the restaurant, she'd been right to see something odd was happening to every man Diana Laylan married. At the funeral for Diana's first husband, the mourners had wept bitterly, shocked to lose a loved one so young. At the second, the family had wept slightly less dramatically, the knowledge that a fortune was coming their way soothed the pain. At the third, there was no weeping,

for the congregation was far too posh to indulge in such emotional outpourings. That lot cracked jokes and drank a lot of whiskey instead. But the one thing they all had in common was an acceptance that these deaths were standalone events, that every guest at the funeral was there to mourn.

That was wrong. Some were there to admire their work. So tell us more about Diana. Yeah, Diana is a fascinating woman to me. I sort of fell in love with her while I was writing her. She is, yeah, as you say, she's aging, although you will never know her age. Even her parents don't know her age, as I say in the book.

But she is marrying to gain social currency. She's marrying to gain stability. She's marrying to look after her beloved son. She's a boy mom. She loves her son very much. And so she keeps trying to climb the rungs of kind of marriage. She can complete it all. But they do keep dying, unfortunately.

Why did you want to make her the focus? I'm fascinated by writing female characters who other people might find unlikable. I think the really interesting thing about my first novel, How to Kill Your Family, was that the response from women was, I really love Grace. And Grace, if you have not read it, is a serial killer. And so I find it so interesting that women often find unlikable fictional characters somehow they root for them so much. Why do you think that is? I think it's because we're all conditioned to be really nice and to be likable and not to be the B word, you know, not to be nasty and horrible and cold and haughty. And so when we see it in fiction, we're sort of thinking, oh my goodness, wouldn't that be nice?

Wouldn't it be nice? This book is full of what's becoming your trademark, deliciously awful characters. And Diana's nemesis comes in the form of her love interest, David's daughter, Kat, who, like, as you mentioned, Diana's son, who's called Zeb, has led a very privileged existence. So where does your inspiration for these quite unlikable people come from? Well, I think it's partly to do with the fact that as a kid I had two real passions.

One was true crime. I had a true crime subscription to a magazine aged eight. And the other was going to their hairdresser with my mum and reading Hello magazine. So if you marry that, you have crime and terrible posh people doing bad things. And so for me, those have always been my two interests. And the thing is, I grew up really privileged. I had a really privileged upbringing. So I've kind of seen these echelons in different ways.

So I think you've got to draw on what you know a bit as well. Yeah, you're sort of scuring your own tribe really, aren't you? Well, you've got to because I know, I've punched up at rich people and the Nouveau Riech in the past and I felt like it's time to punch myself in the face. So that's what I've tried to do here with the liberal elite. Yeah, you've explored a lot of those sort of unwritten social rules in British society like the right way of doing things and knowing or not knowing those unspoken rules and what that can reveal about your character. I mean, how much research did you do? Well, for this one, I didn't have to do that much research,

I'm afraid to say. I do kind of know some of these people in real life. So it's not so much research, But I do think you're right. It's that innate thing that British people somehow grow up knowing, you know, the right words for something. Or, you know, it's very odd, isn't it? The fact that we're not taught it. We just absorb it. Yeah. And also, I'm just reading it.

It's so painful to read about. It's just exhausting. Yeah, it is. Were you worried about offending anybody? No, because I think the great thing about it is that what happens is people never say, I recognize myself. They say, oh, I know that that's X or Y. I know that you're talking about that guy. And you think, why don't you ever see yourself in this?

Because I think cats a bit of me, sad. A bit of me in my 20s when I was being a bit sort of entitled and a bit haughty and a bit, you know, a bit of a waste draw myself. So I can see myself in it. So yeah, it's funny to me when other people don't recognise themselves. You've had three bestselling books, your two novels and your first book, Jogon, which is a memoir about how running helped your mental health. But you've previously said your success in writing is down to a combination of privilege and luck. Why do you feel that way? Because I just think it's true.

I just, that doesn't take anything away from the fun I've had doing it, but I just think. Or how good you are. Well, but I just think there's no way of explaining my career without saying huge privilege as to, you know, who I was born to and the way I grew up and the people I knew. And then because of that, the connections that I had and then luck of selling copies, you know, that doesn't mean, it doesn't mean I'm kicking myself about it. It's just honest. And lots happening in life. You've got the, you're on, you know, kind of out there talking about the new book. But I have to say that we are very sorry to hear about the recent.

loss of your beloved dog Barney and you described him as perfect and we know because I follow you on social and I follow your husband as well Greg James on social media as well and you took time out recently and you went on a road trip together to help process the loss so how was that and how are you feeling? I just feel so sad and I do think I mean I made a joke about it but I do think me and Greg don't have children I do think oh my goodness it was a mistake to not have children like to decide not to have kids when we already had the dog because the dog was like he completed us and now I'm thinking oh my goodness we made a huge mistake. We should have had kids. I'm not really. But there is this big empty hole, you know, in our lives and in our house. And I know everyone that has a pet that

dies, they always feel like maybe they're being a bit silly talking about it. They feel a bit like other people face much worse things in life and a dog is just a dog. It's just a pet. But obviously in the modern world, a pet is part of your family. You know, it really is. It's as important to you as sort of some of your relations. Which is why I think it is really important to talk about it. Because people who do have pets and dogs, I mean, when the, loss happens. It is huge. So tell us about Barney. I mean, I think the reason that we loved him so much is because he had like multiple health problems. And so we nursed him through five huge operations. And I think every time we did that, we sort of felt like we, we were connected to him

on a whole other level than I've ever been with a dog before. And we just were rooting for him. We were rooting for him to have kind of one free year without pain and without, without leg problems. And it just didn't happen for him. And then there is that sadness at the end, which is the responsibility you have as a dog owner is to decide when the end of that dog's life is, which is a horrible thing to have to decide. But it's, if you do it right, it's the most kind of profound thing you will do for a dog, actually, is to decide when the dog has to die. And so we did that. And I think we did it right, and I'm proud of us, but it was a very hard decision. And does the sort of the depth of the grief sort of almost catch you off guard? Oh, all the time. I went for a walk

after dinner last night, and we used to walk him after dinner every night. And I'm now just walking on my own and I walked around the streets and I saw all the dogs that we used to pass that he used to bark at and sort of lunge her and I burst into tears because I just thought oh I'm doing I'm walking in his footsteps and he's not here and that is yeah for me is incredibly sad and and and you wrote an article for Vogue about what you just said about the loss of Barney you jokingly warn people against using a dog as a child substitute is a good lesson in life and one I only learned this week is not to get a dog in place of a kid so tell me about that well I do just think I kind of did sort of in my head, sort of in this delusional way,

feel like Barney was my kid. And my sister has my niece and nephew who I love so much. And weirdly, they all grew up together, the dog and the kids. And so, yeah, there is this bit of me that thinks, oh, no, you know, maybe we should have had, maybe we should have had actual children. But it's fine. I'm just going to get another dog. My husband does not know this.

He's not ready yet. We can tell him now. Greg, we're getting another dog. There you go. I mean, both you and Greg have spoken publicly about your decision not to have children. And then tell me about that decision. Was it conscious? and why did you decide to sort of talk about it publicly?

Because I talk about everything publicly. That's just the way I am. And I think it always helps me and I think it helps other people to talk about mental health issues and child stuff. It was one of those things. I just think every woman, I think maybe it's changed now, hopefully. But, you know, when I was at school,

teachers would say when you have a child, when you're a mother. And it was never if you have a child. It was always when you have a child. And that's fantastic for most women, I think. But it meant I'd never interrogated it. And neither had Greg. And I think Greg would be an amazing father.

And I think I'd be a pretty okay mother. But we'd never discussed it until I got pregnant accidentally and then had a miscarriage. And then that forced us to talk about it and the idea of do we want to do this. And we kind of, we talked about it and talk. I mean, we talked about it so much for years and years and years. And I think we just kind of came to the conclusion that we didn't want it enough. And I think that's important. I think you have to really want to be a parent in order to be a parent, you know?

and I just don't think we were willing to risk it on a maybe yeah and do people still do people come up to you and talk about it yes do people have an opinion about it people are polite enough not to have opinions very much now although I will remember

I once did read a mum's net thread where someone said I feel like he wants to have children and she doesn't oh my goodness and her mental health is stopping them from having a kid and that's really sad and that's stuck with me you know that you know when a mean thing sticks with you and you think oh I wish I hadn't read that but no people don't they don't they don't

They don't have opinions, but they do sometimes still ask. And I think, will I be 60 and people are still asking? Hopefully with very, you know, my very youthful skin, people will still be asking me 60. But yeah, no, people still talk about it. And you've spoken about your own mental health, your struggles with anxiety and OCD over the years. And you wrote a substack, which called multiple anxieties. So why is it important to keep talking about it? Oh, I mean, it's so important.

Because I think when I was 20 and going through it undiagnosed and just living in this kind of mental health scape, there was no kind of internet forums or anything like that where I could find out whether what I was thinking was the same as anyone else, these dark, scary, weird, gross thoughts. And so I do it now because I think so many people still don't have anywhere to find that kind of outlet, to find someone else that they look at and think,

oh, you are like that. That means that it's okay if I'm like that too. You know, you seem to be, you're functional, you're competent, your living life, you know, you're married, you've got a job. And so if I do it, I think it helps other people. It takes away some of that shame and fear. And it helps me too,

because people get in touch with me and they say, oh, I have that thought. And then I think none of us are original. In some ways, mental illness is incredibly banal and mundane. And if you can see it like that as boring or silly rather than terrifying, then it takes some of the fear out of it, pops the balloon. And Bella, I can't have you here without asking a question about you and Greg being at the wedding of the year. You were at Taylor Swift's wedding.

And I know it's something you can't talk about in detail. But Greg did share photos of you in an amazing dress. Yes, I wore my sister's wedding dress. Was it? Did you? Yeah. A lot of pressure? Huge amounts. I had a panic attack that morning. It was absolutely horrendous. Did you have a lot of fun?

I didn't. I'm like the one person that just sat there being anxious the whole time sweating. I had napkins under my armpits at the wedding. Terrible. Bella Mackey, thank you so much for joining us this morning. And Bella's third novel, Clause Out, is out today. Tomorrow, a look at cosplay, short for costume play, the popular arts form involving elaborate design as fans craft outfits and dress up as characters often from the world of video games and comic books. Join me tomorrow. That's all for today's woman's hour. Join us again next time. Hello, I'm Greg Jenner. I'm the host of You're Dead to Me, the comedy podcast that takes history

seriously. And we are back for a 12th series. Everyone in that film is wearing their own pants. We're joined by comedians like Kyle Smith Bino and Desiree Birch. Can't see how this would go wrong. We'll meet many medieval Saints. Motivational speaker saint. With a sort of Madonna head mic on. We're doing a history of underwear. Plus, there's loads more. You're dead to me. Listen on BBC Sounds. Get more with BBC podcasts wherever you listen. Be the first to listen to your favorite shows like evil genius, good bad billionaire and you're dead to me with a subscription to BBC Podcasts premium on Apple Podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts ad-free with an Amazon

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